Ye Are My Disciples

John 13:35

By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

What is love? Love in the Christian sense. Is it to be okay when you see your brother doing what you know will cause him eternal damnation and not worry about him? Or is it to try show him the way through example if he has already heard the truth and you’ve tried to speak it?

What does it mean to speak the truth in love? It definitely doesn’t mean water the truth down so they can’t even tell what you’re saying. But it means to be kind, sad, not exacting and harsh. It’s to make the cord of whips and overturn the tables, but not to use the cord on any human.

Is it love to hate a cousin because they live a life purer than yours? To shun them, label them, abandon them while they loved you no matter what spiritual state you were in? Is it to shut them up for speaking truth, hurling hurtful words at them, or saying hurtful things to others about them, which will invariably reach them anyway?

What is Christian love?

I see lots of it in the ones who other ‘reformers’ would say are lost. The offers to come clean my house have come from more of the so-called lost than from reformers. Literally only one woman who wants to be sanctified has come. I asked one lady, “But why do you love me so much?” (Context being how my own family that lives like her but I’ve never taught or rebuked don’t love me because of the way I live, yet she can love me, someone who she has heard verbally rebuking certain choices she is still making.)

She said, “You know…I feel like a big sinner compared to you and I feel like hiding from you. But I can’t. You’re caring, thoughtful…”

That’s the essence of Christian love. To not water down the truth, to not change yourself, but to still care about others. It should work like that no matter who we are. If I’m living a life on the broad path, why can’t I extend the love I have to other broad path walkers to those on the narrow way? After all, I might one day join them. Imagine how much better it would be if we already have a relationship and then we walk together. Less awkward than if I vilify you then have a Damascus experience and realise I should join you instead of hating you. Remember how cautious the believers were when Paul suddenly pitched up when all along he’d been the hateful Saul?

Truth is- there ARE only two ways in this Christian journey. And I find more love and understanding of my choices from non Sabbath keepers than from my own blood that keeps the Sabbath. That is very sad. That is not how it should be. The world teaches us that blood has our back no matter what. In my case and in the case of a few others on the narrow way, that’s not true. And so, we form our own families- forged together by love and understanding.